'How to be green? Many people have asked us this important question. It's really very simple and requires no expert knowledge or complex skills. Here's the answer. Consume less. Share more. Enjoy life.' Penny Kemp and Derek Wall

In particular I noticed Alistair Mcconnachie. Mcconnachie has two faces, one is as a green economist, he heads the Bromsgrove group that promotes monetary reform and is highly active as a monetary reformer. These people argue that money is created essentially out of thin air by bankers, instead it could be created by the community.

Money could be printed to boost the economy and fund ecological reforms.

He has another face, as a member of the far right. He is critical of a multi-cultural society, he opposes increased immigration, he believes in reducing the number of asylum seekers in Britain using the subtle term 'crimmigrants' to describe 'illegal immigrants'. You can read his build the fences higher and throw them out approach here.

He was too right wing for many members of UKIP and after writing a letter on the holocaust, his membership was suspended. The Guardian claim he stated to one member of UKIP: " I don't accept that gas chambers were used to execute Jews for the simple fact there is no direct physical evidence to show that such gas chambers ever existed... there are no photographs or film of execution gas chambers... Alleged eyewitness accounts are revealed as false or highly exaggerated."

I wrote back to the person who had emailed me the link to the economics conference suggesting that I did not wish to go to a conference with such a figure speaking and had a pretty shocking reply:

I myself have some doubts concerning at least some aspects of the holocaust myth. I think all free inquiry research should be encouraged on this and other matters, so long as no intention to lay new foundations of hatred, nor bait up Jews, nor find all and only Jews guilty for the sins of Zionism and debt-created money system, etc ....

I have seen a pretty damning interview with Alistair in the ITP's newspaper Voice of St George...one far right site summarizes in the following terms:

The latest issue, #32, of The Voice of St George newspaper is out now - and it's a cracking read!

There's articles on Blair's Britain, NWO 'freedom of religion', ususry and debt, movement meetings, the media -- and a cracking in-depth interview with UKIP's ex-Scotland organiser Alistair McConnachie on immigration, the holocaust, the 'war on Terror', green issues and much more!'

I think it is dangerous for those in the green movement and the left to network with people like McConnachie.

Likewise while I am critical of social credit/monetary reform, it is not an economic panacea, nonetheless it is not absolute rubbish either.

The pretty mainstream or even neo-liberal commentator Samuel Brittan has defended the idea of 'printing money' as a way out of crisis. I think there is some limited scope for doing so, obviously take it too far and the currency crashes, the IMF march in and chaos results. Equally if banks simply produced cash out of nothing, they would not be in crisis at present...they could just manufacture some more money.

If you can get to a copy of CNS you can judge whether my paper is a pile of shit or not....or shorn of references, there is a edited version here.

In it I note:

The British League of Rights established Bloomfield Books, which has promoted Douglas’s books along with Holocaust revisionist titles, the Protocols, a massive range of populist conspiracy texts and even Mein Kampf. The League of Rights also encourages supporters to subscribe to Spotlight. The Bromsgrove Group, an alliance of varied monetary reformers, as well as right wingers such as Don Martin from the League of Rights and Alistair McConnachie. James Gibb Stuart acts as convener. His book The Lemming Folk is a conspiracist’s bible, which promotes once again the populist message that the “money power” links capitalism and communism with its plan for world domination. The book, which has been promoted by the far right British National Party, also praises apartheid,

“it means separate development — not racism, or repression, or institutionalized violence, or the eternal social and economic subjugation of one race by another. It was adopted in South Africa some thirty years ago because a white minority saw it then as the only means by which they could preserve their culture and their identity.”

During the 1970s Stuart supported Rhodesia’s white government who he saw as a target for the conspiracy because of their financial independence. His associate Alistair McConnachie, suspended from the UK Independence Party, an anti-European Union group, after writing to the Scotsman newspaper to question the Holocaust, edits Prosperity, a social credit/monetary reform newsletter widely promoted in the green movement. McConnachie, who was a member of the Douglas Secretariat during the 1990s, and remains active in monetary reform circles, is reported to have stated, “I don’t accept that gas chambers were used to execute Jews for the simple fact there is no direct physical evidence to show that such gas chambers existed.”

Just because one proponent of an economic idea is a bad egg doesn't make the idea wrong. I think it is a bizarre argument to use.

Also, how can you (as a leftie) be happy that private banks get to create 97% of the money supply? Monetary reform is not about 'printing money', it is about shifting the control of the creation of money away from banks and back to government.

Where you direct readers to where McConnachie has written his "build the fences higher and throw them out approach", this directs the reader to the writings not of McConnachie at-all, but something written by Peter Brimelow on behalf of some far-right outfit in the States. Where is the evidence this has anything at-all to do with McConnachie?Also, the photo is not of McConnachies (I guess it is of Douglas). All this said, his holocaust revisionism is obviously dodgy. I presume this can be corroborated unlike the other points you made which I have just highlighted.

Its quite clear that the likes of Douglas and McConnachie are/were anti semites and it really is for Social Creditors to condemn these attitudes, if they want to be taken seriously.I am dissapointed the pro Social - Credit Greens, at least to my knowledge have been silent on this issue.As to Social Credit itself as a theory I must admit I'm quite receptive, I'd like to hear the economic arguments against it.

well, not sure about that Douglas fella but Alistair McConnachie views on the Holocaust certainly are a bit "strange", that is unless you think Holocaust denial/revisionism is not antisemitic

"He wrote to one critic, executive member Christopher Skeate, saying: " I don't accept that gas chambers were used to execute Jews for the simple fact there is no direct physical evidence to show that such gas chambers ever existed... there are no photographs or film of execution gas chambers... Alleged eyewitness accounts are revealed as false or highly exaggerated.""

"well, not sure about that Douglas fella but Alistair McConnachie views on the Holocaust certainly are a bit "strange", that is unless you think Holocaust denial/revisionism is not antisemitic"

Are you familiar with the "strawman fallacy"?

What does Alistair McConnachie's opinions of the holocaust have to do with the price of tea in China?

I've asked Derek several times now to demonstrate anything in Douglas's writings that could be deemed "anti-semitic". Marx wrote a book on the "Jewish Question", yet I don't see any "lefties" claiming that Marx was an anti-semite.

If you read the wikipedia article on Social Credit, the charge of "antisemitism" is addressed head on. Douglas's thoughts on Judaism were not unique to that time period. Was Winston Churchill and "anti-semite" as well?

These are attempts to throw mud and hope something sticks. Douglas doesn't even talk about Jews until his fourth book entitled Social Credit, and even then it's one paragraph.

In Economic Democracy he talks about the philosophy of "Prussianism" and at a later date even names a Prussian banking family by name, which happens to have the last surname as myself. Who cares????

Is it alright to criticize "Prussianism", but not Judaism? Is Judaism above all critique?

Douglas was a loathsome and extreme anti-semite, the point is a posting about a far right speaker at a conference this saturday.

From his praise of the protocols to his obssessive anti-semitic conspiracy theorising he was an extreme racist and as such is praised by a wide variety of neo-nazi groups and extreme nationalists to this day.

Many thinkers were tainted with anti-semitism but to take one example I don't see followers of Henry George actively supporting racism today, if they did I would condemn them too.

Equally Marxists and Conservatives don't advocate Holocaust revisionism, Mosley was inspired by Keynesianism, this does not mean Keynes was a racist or Keynesians today are fascists.

"Douglas was a loathsome and extreme anti-semite, the point is a posting about a far right speaker at a conference this saturday."

What I find "loathsome" is baseless accusastions. Again, I ask, what did Douglas say that could be deemed "anti-semitic"?

Praise of the Protocols? What "praise of the protocols"? I certainly have never seen Douglas "praise the protocols", unless your definition of praise is different than mine.

The rest of your "argument" is a straw man. I don't really care about what others who think they have adopted Douglas's ideas think about semites (BTW, all Jews are not semites, and all semites are not Jews - thought I'd clear that up for you). In fact, there were Jews who were followers of Douglas.

As far as Alistair McConnachie is concerned, I really don't care about his views. He's not Douglas, and I'd be willing to bet he doesn't even understand Douglas.

And if you want to talk about the followers of Marx, how many did they kill? How many people did the communist Jew, Lazar Kaganovich, kill?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich

You want to talk about nasty, and hateful people who take on a political cause, look no further than Karl Marx and his followers.

Social Credit formed government in the same province in which I live for over 35 years, and nobody was sent to re-eduction camps, or killed because of their beliefs.

What is truly nasty and vile is the followers of Karl Marx, and their hateful deeds.

I was interested to find Another Green World. 20 years ago I had a book published on different economic concepts to point the way to a sustainable world economy. Someone who liked the book contacted me this year to suggest that I update and re-publish it as a blog. She set up the blog, and the book is now complete on the blog in a series of postings. There are now also additional pieces on global warming and other subjects. Here is the link:

I was interested to find Another Green World. 20 years ago I had a book published on different economic concepts to point the way to a sustainable world economy. Someone who liked the book contacted me this year to suggest that I update and re-publish it as a blog. She set up the blog, and the book is now complete on the blog in a series of postings. There are now also additional pieces on global warming and other subjects. Here is the link: